that's exactly what the old ERM shell program was supposed to do for the Iowa's guns, laser guidance and 100+ nautical mile range

I like the idea of shells, but we need much much longer range cannons, and perhaps some level of guidance

oh, I didn't mean the railgun; no, the original ERM was a shell with a rocket booster strapped on

ESSMs are very good at defending ships, but like you said, they're going to want longer range weapons. Cruise missiles offer us virtually unlimited striking range, whereas the futuristic rail gun has a range 1/16th that of TLAMs. We need to pump that range up.

I think guns are a really useful component of our land bombardment strategy, but we need to actually build those weapons and equip our cruisers with them.

The Zumwalt is good for what it was designed for, it just didn't meet the cost requisites, which is okay, since economies of scale dramatically cut costs. We should finish building 30 Zumwalts so long as we get the price down per ship, like how we got the F-35 price down more than 50%.

The problem with modern missiles, is that they are so expensive to make, and so time-consuming to make that the USN does not have enough to go around.

Most of the time the USN is not deploying ships with full missile compliments so as to allow other ships to have a missile compliment; an Arsenal Ship would almost single-handedly use up a fairly siginficant percentage of the Navy's missiles.

Also, the only way to get 1,000 SAMs on a ship would be to use quad-packed ESSMs, which are a very short-ranged weapon, a BB captain would most likely demand that some of those tubes be filled with something more long-ranged, like the SM-6 or even SM-3 for BMD duty.

I would posit that large-caliber guns are still useful for ASuW work too, but we also don't really know exactly how effective anti-ship missiles truely are. The only times that ASMs have been used semi-recently (thinking the Falklands, 1988's Operation Preying Mantis, and the Stark incident), the missiles did not guarentee a kill; USS Stark was able to limp back home to repair, HMS Sheffield was sunk, but for a number of reasons including ship design flaws, and the IS Sahand survived 3 direct hits from Harpoons, 4 hits from AGM-123 skippers, and a Walleye hit and still did not sink.

The main batteries on a Battleship, while also not guarenteed to give a 1-hit kill, would almost certainly result in a mission-kill on the target, and would have a higher probability of a devastating "lucky hit" resulting in a magazine explosion like on the HMS Hood. even if you had to fire multiple shots to kill the target, again, Battleship shells are far cheaper than missiles.

sure, taking a WWII era hull design and using a nuke reactor would open up enough space for you to do that, but the large-caliber guns still have their place.

The original idea behind the extended-ranged shells for the Zumwalt class was to convert 16" gun shells for the Iowa class to be able to shoot accurately at ranges over 100 Nautical Miles.

The 16" HE shell does the same amount of damage as a TLAM does, but for much much much less cost, extend it's range out to say, 90 NM; you gain ranges sufficient to hit targets much farther inland with the same power as a TLAM, but with much less cost. the 16" AP shell can penetrate almost 30 feet of reinforced concrete at or slightly below ground level; short of a Nuke, only very specialized bombs dropped from jets can replicate that, which again, said bombs are very expensive, and only a very limited number were ever built.

I like the idea of having battleships; if you take of the guns out, you can put in 416 Mk 41 cells which allows us to put on one ship, hundreds of cruise missiles, or over a thousand SAMs, or somewhere inbetween.

This would allow the ship to operate alone, or with a small ASW frigate escort, wielding as much firepower as a carrier battle group.

And thats why in WWII, the Battleships had literally close to 100 AA guns on the ship itself and always sailed with escorts (or escorted something).

In the 1980s, the principle was the same, 4 CWIS mounted on the ship + the 12 5" guns firing heavy flak and they always sailed with heavy ASW and Cruiser escorts.

Air power would kill any Battleship that gets caught out alone.

That's fair; I suppose I'm just more pessimistic and critical by nature.

I'm just optimistic of the judgement of our armed forces. I figure based on the weight and size limitations that the F-35 isn't that great of a airforce multirole, but probably works pretty well as a carrier based multirole.

The F-35 isn't a complete failure though. From what i've heard, after they solved the excessive vibration problem, the F-35 has become one of the most comfortable planes for a pilot, with the most visability of surroundings and systems, and the most ease-of-use.

Hey, i'll be the first to admit that I don't know everything about the F-35 program and it's capabilities; but the concerns i've raised have also been raised by several high-ranking israeli officials, as well as officials from several other nations.

People with limited knowledge arriving at omniscient conclusions. And never really understand or accept that they may have only partial limited understanding. But hey they read it somewhere and it supports their bias so its fact. And can not be convinced otherwise.

Additionally, it's radar stealth characteristics are null against IRST systems and long-ranged IR missiles like the older Russian R-27ET. Depending on the effectiveness of modern Chinese and Russian IRST systems, they may already be able to defeat, or at least match, or force the F-35 to turn away in BVR combat; and as already stated, when it closes into a merge, they can beat it in a dogfight.

Also, did they ever fix the problem of the F-35's stealth coating peeling off when it achieves speeds greater than Mach 1?

If it's stealth really does work as they say it does, that'd be great; but the F-35 system is still less-capable combat wise. Additionally, the maintenance time, costs, and skills required; for the F-35 and other Stealth aircraft are orders of magnitude higher than other, older, more conventional aircraft; which is another detraction in my book.

Now, if the F-35 was supposed to be some kind of "stepping-stone" with limited run production, i'd be fine with that too, but the fact of the US military and UK and several other countries exclusively basing their entire future air wings on the F-35 makes absolutely no sense to me, and in my book is an EXTREMELY bad idea.

it, and all other "strike fighters" most certainly do need to be capable of dogfighting, Vietnam has already taught the world that lesson.

I dislike it because it's capabilities are the same as, or lesser than the planes we already have or have retired long ago (like the F-14 and F-4). As I already states, It's singular "claim to fame" as the military community regulary states, is it's state-of-the-art stealth systems.

I simply don't believe that stealth systems are nearly as effective as what they are claiming; because of instances like the F-117 being shot down by a 1960s Yugoslavian SA-3 in 1999, or the Zumwalt's stealth profile being leaked by the Chinese and Russians as a 60 foot vessel on radar (which is 100% fully detectable by even a WWII era radar system).

the F-35 does not need to dogfight; what's important is its' ability to evade enemy SAMs and AAMs. The Pentagon has spent $20 billion or so per year on average on the F-35 program. For what it is, this really isn't that bad.

Additionally, the F-35 is so much more expensive than the F-14 and F-18, that the USN will have less F-35s than we currently have F-18s. It may be much lighter and slightly smaller, but the much higher cost negates the expanded capacity.
The Pentagon currently projects the future Carrier Air wing to consist of 40-50 F-35s and no F-18s.

It's stealthy up until they carry anything on any of the external pylons (which is the only way to carry more than like 2 bombs), which negates its sole "claim to fame".
The F-35 is so bad at dogfighting, that a few years ago at Red Flag, an F-16 with 2 fully fueled external fuel tanks beat it in a dogfight.

The Zumwalt is really vulnerable and the stealth is really garbage, but the F-35 is according to the Pentagon, a more stealthy aircraft then the F-22. Personally I think the Su-57 is a significantly better aircraft, but an F-35 is much smaller and lighter, allowing carriers to carry quite a few more. The F/A-18 is nice and all, but it would never win a one-on-one fight with an F-35. I personally think upgrades to the F-35's stealth would make it worth every cent.

I've got no problems with this type of discussion, so long as it remains civil :)

yeah, except the Zumwalt has no gun ammo stockpiled or being made because it's too expensive and has been cancelled,and the F-35 has a smaller weapon's payload than the F-18 and the older F-14, additionally, it cannot manuever in a dogfight.

Additionally, stealth systems are proven to either not work in the first place, or are made obsolete within 1 year of initial deployment due to hacking or technological advance.

they are two systems without real roles that are either outclassed by the previous generation, or are already obsolete.

The F-35/Zumwalt are not trash... they are designed for very specific roles. The Zumwalt is a shore bombardment ship that is supposed to be somewhat harder to target with missiles. The F-35 is a replacement for the F/A-18A/C, supplanting the original hornet's lack of modern sensor apparatus and it's inability to STOVL